Zcash

According to the Zcash website, this cryptocurrency is the first open and permissionless crypto that can guarantee the privacy of transactions by using zero-knowledge cryptography.

If we compare it to BTC, we can see that they are both open and permissionless cryptos but there is a slight misconception that BTC transactions are anonymous. A history of each BC transaction is displayed on the public ledger known as the blockchain. The sophisticated software can be used to determine who is responsible for the huge number of these tranactions and in response to the lack of privacy, there were a number of coins that focused on adding the extra layer of functionality.  This guide however hopes to help those new to Zcash to understand how difficult it actually is from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

With Bitcoin’s success, the gates opened for hundreds of other coins including Zcash. This particular cryptocurrency was founded in 2016 by a team of scientists led by Zooko Wilcox O’Hearn in response to demands from the blockchain community for the open financial system and additional privacy features. Zcash was created as decentralized and open-source crypto that offers privacy and security for the users’ financial history. All transactions can be confirmed quickly and efficiently on the network because ZEC is basically built on Bitcoin’s original codebase. While BTC and other cryptocurrencies expose users’ financial history and past transactions, Zcash has shielded transactions that obfuscate the users’ personal information.

While being quite criticized in the past for providing a haven for illegal transactions, the goal of the foundation is to protect the users’ privacy for legitimate reasons. Unlike Bitcoin pseudonymity, this cryptocurrency offers privacy and real anonymity for users and transactions. Most other assets that provide anonymity rely on private keys which can make it easier to identify the users after the transactions were made. Since SEC uses ZK-SNARKS, this means the users never need to reveal their addresses and reduces the amount of information that can be exposed.

Back in 2013, Matthew Green, Christina Garman, and Ian Miers from Johns Hopkins University created Zerocoin as a privacy extension to BTC. However, the indecisive community response and the desire to move as fast as prompted the team to recruit an additional scientist to build the standalone protocol -Zcash. The Zerocoin Electric Coin Company was formed in 2015, led by Zooko Wilcox O’Hearn to help the engineers deliver this idea, so they launched the Zcash Foundation in 2017 to make sure that the network keeps on getting developed.

But first, let’s see what more we are going to learn about Zcash before we start moving from lesson to lesson.

1. Similarities With BTC
2. How Does Zcash Work?
3. What are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?
4. What Are ZK-Snarks?
5. How Is Zcash Mined?
6. Privacy
7. History
8. Best ZEC Wallet
9. Best ZEC Exchanges
10. Future Work
11. ZEC Coin
12. Transaction Linkability
13. Funding And Foundation
14. Conclusion